Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II

In 1938 Europe was divided – between those who thought that Adolf Hitler’s intentions were benign, and those who knew they were not. Unfortunately the then British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was in the former camp. He, along with his French and Italian counterparts, attended a meeting in Munich in September of that year that would go down as one of the most shameful examples of appeasing a tyrant in history. Famously, having signed the Agreement allowing Hitler to go ahead and annexed the Sudetenland, a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain returned to England promising ‘peace in our time’.

In re-creating the run-up to the Agreement as well as the conference itself and its shocking aftermath, David Faber sheds new light on this extraordinary episode. Full of narrative drive, vivid characters and with the highest possible stakes, Munich is a superb piece of modern history writing.

Reviews

“Such is his skill as a writer and as a forceful, if one-dimensional, historian, his case against Chamberlain must be judged a masterwork of advocacy” – Daily Mail

“Faber has written a compelling work of narrative history” – The Spectator

“David Faber has made an important contribution to our understanding of the diplomatic debacle which signalled the start of the Second World War”- The Independent